British police search address linked to Sweden blasts
The man suspected of carrying out weekend bombings in Sweden said in a purported will he was fulfilling a threat by al-Qaeda in Iraq to attack Sweden, the SITE monitoring group said Monday.
"(The) Islamic State (of Iraq) has fulfilled what it promised you," said Taymour Abdel Wahab in the will posted by a jihadist on the Shumukh al-Islam website, according to the U.S.-based group.
The Swedish capital was hit by twin explosions on Saturday — a suspected suicide attack and separate blast — targeting Christmas shoppers in a busy pedestrian area of the city.
A man investigators suspect may have been the bomber was killed while the other explosion nearby injured two people.
Shumukh al-Islam named Taymour Abdel Wahab as the man responsible for the blasts, although Sweden’s intelligence agency Saepo has refused to comment on the claim.
The late chief of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, had called in an audio message in September 2007 for reprisals in Sweden for the cartoons of Islam’s prophet Mohammed by Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks.
Baghdadi also offered cash for killing the cartoonist and named Swedish companies like Ericsson, Ikea, and Volvo, as potential targets to harm Sweden’s economy.
Living and studying in Britain
Police in Britain said earlier Monday they were searching a property in connection with the weekend bombings in Sweden, amid reports that the man linked to the attacks used to live in the country.
British media reported Monday that Wahab had studied at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton, around 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of London, and had been living in the town in recent years.
His wife and children were reportedly still living in Luton, The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph reported.
Britain’s Home Office, or interior ministry, refused to comment on the reports.
"We remain in close contact with the Swedish authorities," a spokeswoman told AFP. "It would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation at this time."
Sweden on Sunday said it was investigating the blasts as a "terrorist crime." Anders Thornberg, head of the security unit of domestic intelligence Saepo, said: "We suspect that it was a suicide attack."
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a plane as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day last year, had also spent time in Britain, studying mechanical engineering at University College London.
Swedes shocked by 1st terror attack in 3 decades
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on Sunday said the attack was "unacceptable" but urged Swedes not to jump to "premature conclusions" that "create tension which paints pictures that are then difficult to change."
"Sweden is an open society … which has stated a wish that people should be able to have different backgrounds, believe in different in gods … and live side by side in our open society," Reinfeldt said at a news conference.
Swedes, with a tradition of welcoming immigrants and a culture of transparency, began questioning the veracity of their self-image of being a secure nation after the 1986 murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. In 2003, the fatal stabbing of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in an department store was a wake-up call for many.
But there have been no major terrorist strikes.
"We had a terrorist attack in the 1970s from the Rote Armee Fraktion of Germany, but if this is a suicide bomber it is the first time in Sweden," security police spokesman Anders Thornberg told The Associated Press. "It’s very serious and it’s very tragic that these things have come to Sweden too."
In October, Sweden raised its terror threat alert level from low to elevated because of what police called "a shift in activities" among Swedish-based groups that could be plotting attacks.
Days later, police made several arrests over an alleged bomb plot in the country’s second-largest city, Goteborg. The suspects were later released and police said the city was no longer deemed to be under threat.
Magnus Norell, a terrorism expert at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said it was just a matter of time before Sweden was hit by a terror attack.
Saturday’s blast could have been disastrous if the car explosions had set off gas canisters inside the vehicle.
"We were really blessed there. Something must have gone wrong, because it is a fairly normal way of arming a car to get maximum destructive effect," Norell said. Had it succeeded, it could have injured people "in all possible directions," he said.